


Demons Play

by writergirl8



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 07:48:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4996450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slowly, he slides back down with her, pulling her part way into his lap and brushing some hair off of her forehead. He tilts his head to the side, staring at her, seeing the girl who had accidentally pushed him off of a swing in first grade, and the girl who had danced too hard at their first middle school dance, and the girl who had pressed her lips to his to stop a panic attack, and the girl who had made him feel like she was searching for the world in his eyes a million times over.</p><p>“I’m gonna do it,” he says, whispering it to her. “I’m gonna figure it out. I’m gonna bring you back to life.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demons Play

* * *

"You're not going without me."

He says the words with a heavy tongue and a nauseous pit in his stomach. Because Lydia is right in front of him, and this is the last time, the last everything, and all he can think about is the fact that all of it has been for nothing. In the end, no matter what he did, he couldn't save her.

"I didn't realize you got a choice in the matter," Lydia says, and he knows she's trying to make him laugh but she's got tears leaking from her eyes, and they're mixing with his in a salty, sweaty pool on her cheek. There's nothing funny about the fact that Lydia Martin is using all of her last breaths to make fun of his hero complex. Especially when it comes to saving her.

How could he not save her. He's always saved her, and she's saved him, and that's what they do. Any other option is unheard of— it means that Stiles didn't sacrifice enough. Didn't give enough. Try enough. And Lydia is lying on his lap and there's blood everywhere and she is looking up at his eyes instead of the stars and he sees his failure in every piece of her heaving body.

This isn't about him. This isn't about what he has failed to preserve. It is about the dark space in the sky after Lydia leaves. It is about the hole in his stomach because she is going to be gone forever.

"You're not going without me," Stiles says again, and every part of his body is  _shuddering_ because he came into this world almost exactly a month after Lydia Martin did, and he has never had to live on a planet where she wasn't anywhere. Where she wasn't somewhere in the world, eating, sleeping, breathing.

"You're not coming with me," Lydia says, mustering all of her energy so that she can glare fiercely at him. Despite himself, Stiles wipes a tear from the corner of her eye with his thumb. "You're going to stay here. With Scott. With Melissa. With your dad— with your  _family_."

"Lydia-" Stiles says, and everything is gasping and whirling, like a firework show that's reaching its spinning, spitting finale. "You're my family."

She closes her eyes and begins to shake in earnest, her breathing getting more laborious even as his words breathe life into her body.

"I love you," she says to the darkness, because that is what he is from now on— he is a shadow on the wall of his bedroom that forever, eternally misses her. "I spent all this time in love with you and I think I thought… I think I thought it was going to happen. One day. Eventually."

His chest expands for just a moment before he remembers the fact that he's losing  _everything_.

"You love me?"

She nods, biting her lower lip.

"Stiles, do—?"

"Yeah," he says, voice gravel against her. "Fuck, Lydia, always. Always, always, always. Always."

The sob of relief is mixed with too much agony. He kisses her warm cheeks and her forehead and her mouth, quickly and carefully, because she has to breathe. She has to keep breathing.

"In and out," he coaches, trying to coax breath from her lips. "Just keep breathing for me."

"Stiles—"

"I'm not letting you die."

"You didn't let me anything. But it's still going to happen."

He can't stand this. He can't. He feels like a piece of himself is being violently torn from his body. He feels like he's losing the most essential bits of what makes Stiles Stilinski himself. And somehow, as she stares up at him with a hopeful smile on her face, he can't stop thinking about how much he had forgotten. He had lost it. He had left behind the knowledge of how absolutely, completely, and irrevocably he was hers. All this time.

"We were gonna live in a shitty apartment in a big city," he says. "And I was gonna cook for you because you can't cook. And you were gonna decorate it, because I couldn't care less about where I was living as long as my boxers were on the floor of our bedroom."

Lydia's breaths are wrong. He doesn't know how to describe it, just knows that he has spent the last couple of years learning the way Lydia Martin breathes, and this isn't it. He hadn't sought out the knowledge, but somehow it had become his.

"That sounds perfect," she says. "A little disgusting, but perfect." Stiles laughs, pressing his forehead to hers, and Lydia isn't leaving him, she can't, because he's not letting her go without him. "I'm going to miss you so much. I don't believe in… anything, but I believe that I'm going to miss you anyways."

He holds her until the body in his arms doesn't whisper words of comfort back to him. He holds her until he feels the weight of all their wasted time resting in his arms. He holds her as the howl in his throat becomes nearly impossible to choke down, and he shakes with it, rocking Lydia back and forth as he tries so hard to not feel like the hollow man he has become.

Scott is the first one to approach.

"Stiles, we have to take her somewhere."

He shakes his head.

"No. We have to hide the body."

"What?"

"We have to hide it."

"We can't just—" Kira begins, looking terribly startled, but it's Malia's voice which snaps Stiles out of his own fog.

"People are going to wonder where she is."

Stiles nods, slowly. He stands up, stumbling under the weight of his loss. He swipes at the tears on his face and turns around to face Scott.

"They're not gonna have to wonder for much longer," he says, voice numb despite the fact that there is fire in his eyes.

Scott realizes it at the exact moment that Stiles decides, officially, to go through with it.

"No," he says. "Stiles, we can't."

"I don't fucking care." He feels like a machine. "I don't care."

"How are you going to do it? Call Theo?"

"I don't  _care_!" Stiles roars, finally letting the yell streamline away from his body. The nausea rises as his scream echoes across the field, and for a moment, he doubles over, hands on his knees as he shudders. "I just know that I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna figure it out, Scott."

Scott stares at him in horror as Stiles turns back to Lydia's body, alone on the ground. He can't let her be alone. He can't.

Slowly, he slides back down with her, pulling her part way into his lap and brushing some hair off of her forehead. He tilts his head to the side, staring at her, seeing the girl who had accidentally pushed him off of a swing in first grade, and the girl who had danced too hard at their first middle school dance, and the girl who had pressed her lips to his to stop a panic attack, and the girl who had made him feel like she was searching for the world in his eyes a million times over.

"I'm gonna do it," he says, whispering it to her. "I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna bring you back to life."

* * *

 

He wakes up with the taste of death in his mouth.

At first, Stiles Stilinski questions the feeling of unsettled anxiety that has made itself home in his stomach. But then it all surges up to him, slamming into him like a freight train, and he can't  _breathe_ , can't can't can't, so he leaps out of his chair and finds himself crawling on the floor with absolutely no intention of going anywhere.

"Stiles!"

Scott's voice is distant in the background, and he falls heavily to his knees with Stiles, shouting at him to breathe. Stiles can't breathe. He can't. Lydia is dead.

"How could you let me fall asleep?" he manages to gasp out. "Shit, Scott, how could you let me fall asleep?"

"You needed to sleep," Scott says, his usually warm eyes clouded with trouble. "Stiles, you were talking crazy. You were talking about bringing Lydia back to life."

He pictures her body on the ground, and everything goes so completely still. His heart speeds up as bile rises in his throat, and Stiles dry heaves onto the floor. There's nothing left in his stomach anymore. He'd thrown it all up the night before, when he'd been pleading with Scott to keep Lydia's death a secret for long enough for Stiles to be able to figure out if it would be possible to bring her back.

Perhaps Stiles himself had looked dead enough to make Scott concede to him.

"Theo," he breathes out. "Theo has that serum. Scott, did my phone ring? Did he call me back?"

Scott shakes his head, looking so concerned that Stiles wants to punch him in the face. This isn't the kind of broken that can be fixed with a pack meeting and a few reese's peanut butter cups. This is the actual, literal end of the world. There isn't anything left that makes him who he is.

He'd thought he was a monster. Before she'd died, he thought he was ruined. But that wasn't it. That was nothing compared to how Stiles Stilinski feels when he is nothing.

"I'm gonna call him again," Stiles decides, scrambling up and searching the room for his phone. "I'm gonna call him right now."

"Dude-"

Scott spies the phone first, and he grabs for it, just trying to keep it out of Stiles' reach. To get him to see anything resembling sense. For a moment, Stiles stares at his best friend's fingers, curled around his phone, holding it out of reach. The urgency is replaced by a calm that rides along a wave of hilarity.

No. He's not going to lose Lydia because of Scott.

It's easy, right now, for Stiles to cock his head. To smile at Scott. To reach out for the phone with a patient hand.

"If you could bring Allison back, would you?"

Scott blinks at him. He hesitates for a moment, then places the phone in Stiles' open palm.

"I hope you know what you're doing," he says. "She might not be the same. Do you remember what happened with Hayden?"

"Liam made her human again," Stiles says, brushing it off. "Scott… she…" He remembers, for the first time, what Lydia had said, and Stiles' body sags as he falls onto the bed. "She said she loves me."

"Loved," Scott corrects without thinking. Stiles looks up at him with disbelief in his eyes. "Shit, I'm sorry, I just… we can't go around bringing people back whenever they're killed. I love Lydia too, and I'm going to miss her every day, but  _Jesus Christ,_ Stiles. You can't bring her back from the dead."

"I don't care what I can and can't do," Stiles tells him, scrolling through the contacts on his phone. He hits Theo's name and presses the phone to his ear. "This is the most human I've ever felt in my life, Scott."

His best friend sits next to him on the bed as he makes the phone call.

* * *

"How long has it been?" Theo asks. Stiles isn't focusing on anything but the serum that Theo is tossing too casually between his hands. His lips are tugged up into a smirk that reveals what he knows- he is fully aware of how callous he is being with the one thing that could bring Lydia back to life.

"Two days," Malia answers for him, voice too loud and too abrupt in Stiles' ears. It's foreign to think that time has moved, because he most certainly hasn't. He hasn't been eating, hasn't been sleeping regularly, hasn't thought about anything but the time Lydia stole one of his hoodies and never gave it back to him. He wants it back. He wants to press his nose into it as he falls asleep and remember what her shampoo smells like, because there's this huge chance that he might never smell it again and that idea makes Stiles completely lost to the world.

"You're fast," Theo notes, amused by this. "Most people have a grieving period."

"Why grieve for someone who isn't dead?" replies Stiles, voice hard.

"Well," Theo says, tossing the serum from his left hand to his right. "Possibly not dead. Not dead if you give me what I want."

Malia stiffens behind Stiles. He hadn't told her about this part. Hadn't bothered, because it didn't matter.

"What do you want?" she asks, moving up, closer to Theo. The distrustful look she offers him only serves to make Theo's smile grow.

"You didn't tell her?"

"It wasn't important."

Theo shakes his head, turning his bright eyes towards Malia.

"Stiles here has offered to lead me to Scott."

Malia tucks her chin inwards in surprise.

"Stiles wouldn't bring you to Scott," she says, fully confident. "Stiles would never do that."

Theo frowns, seeming delighted that she would say this.

"For Lydia?" he says. "For Lydia, I think Stiles would do anything."

Something in Stiles' body  _curdles_ at his words, but Malia's response is more than enough to make up for the punch to his gut at just how accurate Theo is.

"Scott is the most important person in Stiles' life," she says, disbelieving. "Drop the bullshit, Theo."

The thing is, Stiles is calm. So calm that he feels like every movement his body makes is the natural thing to do. He can hear his own breath as he grips the handle and walks closer to Theo. And when he hears Malia's breaths too, he knows that she knows. So Stiles moves forward. And he stabs.

The first dig of the knife into Theo's flesh is just meant to surprise him. His eyes widen as Stiles leans into the knife, twisting it the way Stiles remembers twisting a sword in Scott. He feels pure, unadulterated energy pulsing through his veins and Theo's fingers loosen around the serum and Malia dives forward to grab it, already expecting it to fall from his grip. She grasps it easily, then steps back as Stiles lowers Theo slowly to the ground, tugging the knife out.

It isn't enough to kill him. But then Stiles slides the knife out of Theo's butchered flesh and gently digs it into the carotid artery, brushing at some of the blood with his thumb as it slips and leaks from Theo's neck. And he steps back as Theo's eyes become glassy; suddenly as distant as the stars that they are reflecting.

Somehow his breaths seem louder now that Theo isn't breathing anymore.

Then he remembers that Lydia isn't either, and his body hunches forward as he drops the knife. It clatters loudly to the ground, deafening him, and his heart speeds up as he sees the blood that he had purposefully spilled onto the asphalt.

Malia darts forward and wraps her fingers around the knife, getting her prints all over it. When Stiles looks up at her, she steps behind him, lowering her eyes to the body which he is hovering over.

"I won't tell anyone," she says quietly.

He nods. Stares at Theo a little while longer. Plucks the knife from Malia's grip, glad to be reunited with the handle.

"I know," he says.

And then he walks away.

* * *

 

Under the fluorescent lights of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital, the worry lines in Melissa McCall's face seem deeper. She walks briskly in her purple scrubs and white sneakers. Stiles has years upon years of memories of her in these clothes. He can see her lifting Scott up from the ground, kissing at his bruises. He can see her ducking into the back row of their sixth grade graduation, pulling a chunky camera out of her purse and flashing Stiles an exhausted smile as she snaps a picture of the two of them. And Stiles can look at her scrubs and recall hugs, and admonishment, and brief moments of clarity that had come from the words of advice she offered when he would sneak out of Scott's room during their sleepovers, unable to sleep after his mom died.

Now, as she leads Stiles towards the morgue, he thinks that he doesn't trust anyone more to keep Lydia's body safe. She's going to keep their secret safe, too. He knows she doesn't agree- can see it in the thin press of her lips and the way her eyes seem to be warning him. But she's not going to stop him. Not when all of the pieces have fallen into place because Stiles had worked hard to put them there.

He wonders if she would feel the same way if she knew that Theo Raeken's body is decomposing somewhere just outside of Beacon Hills.

"Just through here," Melissa says, her voice muted, and Scott offers her a smile that is probably supposed to be reassuring, but Stiles knows it isn't.

"Thank you, mom," he mutters under his breath, holding the door open for her, and the nod she gives him is weak at best. They're soldiers, the three of them, and there's no reason to smile on the way to battle. Even if they survive this, they're never going to be the same again. Stiles feels like his innards have shifted since Lydia had died, and bringing her back isn't going to put everything back together.

They all stand in the quiet, cold room full of bodies for several moments, readjusting to the idea of Lydia being inside of these walls, separated from them in a way that should be irrevocable.

"Are you sure," Melissa asks finally, her voice calm. Scott looks over at Stiles, pleading in his eyes, but the resolve inside of Stiles only strengthens. He swallows. He nods.

He needs Lydia Martin.

"I'm positive."

Lydia is still wearing the clothes that she'd died in. Her collarbones peak out of the thin black tank top that she wears, and Stiles wishes she'd been in something warmer. She looks so pale, so cold, and there isn't any  _life_ in her. His hand is shaking as he reaches into the small duffel bag he'd brought and pulls out the serum. Carefully, he hands it to Melissa, who produces a syringe from a drawer at the corner of the room and carefully fills it with the serum.

He doesn't want to touch her until her heart is beating again. Doesn't want to let himself near her until he can see her chest moving as air rushes through her lungs. Still, when Melissa moves close to Lydia, he shadows her quietly, coming to stand on the other side of the tray which Lydia is splayed upon. For a moment, Stiles believes that they won't have to do this. That Lydia's eyes will flutter open on their own accord, and she'll tell him that it's okay, that everything's okay, that it's alright that he decided to end another life so that he could have hers back.

"You know she won't be the same when she wakes up, right?" Scott reminds Stiles gently. "She might not remember who we are."

"The memories come back eventually," Stiles says flatly. "It doesn't matter as long as she's alive."

"Stiles, she might not remember what she said to you before she-"

"I  _know_ ," he says, voice too tense. "Fuck, Scott, I know, okay?" Then he looks over at Melissa. "Bring her back."

She rubs iodine into Lydia's skin with a cotton ball, and Stiles can see her hands shaking. He looks up at her, eyes wide, but she's got hers closed and is breathing, trying to steady herself. Stiles can literally, physically see Melissa's hands stop shaking as she moves the needle close to Lydia's neck and inserts it carefully in, slowly pressing down with her thumb so that the serum will be injected into Lydia.

Stiles counts the number of times his heart pounds in his chest before Lydia's begins beating again. One, two, three, four- she arches upwards, gasping for breath, clutching onto her chest as she begins choking for air. They all stare at her, at the way she looks like a wild animal, her eyes darting around the room in a panic. He knows what she's doing almost immediately, because it's what he would do. She is trying to collect information. To gather it so that she can understand where she is and what's going on.

Scott is the first one to move, and Lydia's eyes snap to him, widening when she sees him. He moves forward, maybe to touch her, but Lydia jerks her arm away, alarmed. When she sees where she's seated, her hand flies to her mouth, and she opens her mouth to scream, hair flying as she twists wildly around.

That's when she sees Stiles.

The scream is silent as she looks at him, all sounds slinking back down into Lydia's chest. He can't move, staring at her parted mouth and terrified eyes. She's questioning him, but he can't focus on anything except the familiarity that is registering in her eyes. He takes a step forward. She doesn't move back, instead keeping her eyes locked on his as she breathes hard.

"Lydia?" he says, careful.

"Stiles," she responds, and his insides collapse. "Stiles, what's- what did you  _do_?"

He blinks.

"What?"

"I remember… I remember dying. Stiles, I was fucking  _dead_." Her voice gets hysterical. "What did you do?" He opens his mouth to speak, but Lydia shakes her head. "No, get me off of this thing. Now. Right now."

Scott moves forward to help, but Lydia reaches for Stiles, wrapping her arms all the way around him so that he can lift her off of the table. Melissa slides it back in and slams the door shut as Lydia's feet touch the ground for the first time, and she shudders at the sound, looking up at Stiles.

"You okay?" he asks, voice breaking as her thumbs press too tight into his neck, fingernails digging in.

He wants this so bad. He wants the pain. He wants the pain of her hands, wants her body to weigh him down. He wants every piece of realism that Lydia can offer him, every jerk back to reality, because that means this is seriously happening.

"What did you do?" she asks again, voice soft as her hands move from his neck to his flannel. She clutches onto it to keep herself upright, swaying.

"I-" The words get stuck in his throat. He swallows. "I brought you back to me."

It's unreal. This is unreal.

"So I was dead."

Stiles nods.

"Yeah."

"And you… brought me back to life."

He nods again.

"Are you… are you fucking  _insane?"_ Her voice is loud and harsh, causing Stiles to wince, but Lydia's hands move up to his cheeks, stroking them with her thumbs. "You cannot fucking bring someone back to life. You're messing with the universe. This is bigger than biology, Stiles."

"I thought you didn't believe in that stuff?" he challenges.

She lets out a hysterical laugh of disbelief, pressing her face into his chest.

"And the pack let you do this?" Lydia asks, muted by Stiles' shirt, her voice already getting tired. "They let you… they let you bring me back to life?"

"I don't know," Stiles whispers to her, bringing his hands around her waist to steady her. "I don't care. I did it anyways."

"You remember the pack?" Scott asks.

Lydia lifts her head from Stiles' shirt, still clutching onto him as she turns to Scott.

"Yes," she says. "Why wouldn't- oh. You… you used Theo's serum, didn't you?" Scott nods in confirmation, and Stiles feels a note of pride for Lydia answering her own question. "I shouldn't… I shouldn't be able to remember. Why can I remember?"

They all stare at each other.

"Deaton," Stiles says finally. "Scott, can you get him to my house?"

"Your house?"

"We can't get you home until we come up with a backstory for your mom."

"You didn't come up with a-?"

"He didn't anything," Melissa says, speaking for the first time. Lydia turns and stares at her. When she doesn't offer any more information, Lydia looks over at Scott.

"You were dead," he says by way of explanation. "He didn't anything."

Lydia sways in Stiles' arms. He catches her as her knees buckle, and she clings onto him.

Clings onto life.

* * *

 

Lydia is shivering when she walks into Stiles' bedroom. She's wrapped in a towel, threadbare, but large enough to cover her tiny frame. He's been sitting rigidly on his bed, back straight, eyes staring blankly at the wall. But when Lydia comes inside, he scrambles up, facing her as she closes the door.

Her hair is wet, and she looks so vulnerable as she turns to him. He can't stand the look in her eyes- feels like he's been watching tears well in them since he brought her back to his house, and he's been holding his breath, waiting for them to fall so that he can just brush them away and make it all vanish.

"Deaton is here," says Stiles. "You should get dressed." Lydia raises her eyebrows at him. "Oh. Right."

The first t-shirt that he can grab is a white one with black around the collar, which he hurriedly throws at Lydia. Digging deeper in the drawer, Stiles finds a pair of grey sweatpants that are too short for him- most of his clothes are, at this point- and hands them off to her. He keeps his back to her as Lydia drops the towel to the floor and changes into his clothes.

"You can turn around."

She's rolling the waist of his sweatpants, and they're still too long for her. Normally, Stiles would laugh, but he's focusing hard on Lydia's fingers. The way they move perfectly, when she had been so still only a few hours ago. When she looks up, he's still watching her, and Lydia closes her eyes.

"Do I seem different?"

"Do you feel different?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

Two green eyes drift away from Stiles' face and go towards the window, where the California winter that she wasn't supposed to see the end of is on display outside of Stiles' window.

"We should go," he says abruptly, and he wants to reach for her hand because he feels like he needs to be touching her at all times to make sure she is real, but he doesn't do it.

There's a small crowd in Stiles' living room. The pack. Assembled on old, saggy couches and not speaking to each other. Deaton is in the center of the room, on the chair that Stiles' dad usually occupies, but he isn't home and Deaton rises when he sees Lydia.

"Lydia," he says. "Glad to have you back with us." She squares her jaw, but doesn't say anything.

"We want to know why she remembers everything," Stiles says. He's standing slightly behind Lydia, letting his body curve protectively towards hers. His spine is set on edge, and he feels like he's shielding his achilles heel.

"Scott told us," Malia says, frowning at Lydia. "She remembers  _everything_?"

Lydia nods.

"At the beginning of your junior year, we tied your souls together," Deaton says. "And, although it didn't seem pertinent to mention it at the time, that connection is two-sided. It's a tether, binding souls together. But it didn't just bind Stiles' soul to Lydia's. Hers is there too. And when she died, her soul was left in an in-between state, because a part of it was still holding onto Stiles."

"Bardo," Kira says, looking to Deaton for confirmation.

"Precisely."

"Does that mean Lydia's mind is open to be invaded like Stiles' was?" asks Scott, concerned.

"She's not there anymore," Deaton says. "When Stiles brought her body back, her soul was already here- with him. It had all of her personality, and her memories, and every aspect that Lydia would need to appear normal."

"So it's fine," Stiles says, tentative. Lydia doesn't look at him. "She's fine."

"She's fine as long as you are," Deaton says, and Stiles stiffens.

"What?"

"Her soul is tied to yours, but it's fragile. When yours moves on, it's going to drag Lydia's with it. As long as you're alive, Lydia will have her soul, but if you were to die, she would essentially become a shell. Just a beating heart, a body. Nothing else."

Panic rises in Stiles' stomach, and Lydia shifts towards him, taking a step back so that she can be next to him.

"So I'll just be careful," he says, forcing flippancy.

"Or you can put it right," Lydia says quietly. Stiles looks down at her, his insides growing cold.

"What?"

"You fucked with the universe," Lydia reminds him. "Stiles, put it back. Put it back and you can live your life however you want to."

"I don't want to live my life if you're not living yours."

Lydia's eyes, filled with tears, flit to the ceiling.

"Stiles-"

"I watched you die, Lydia," he says, gripping her arm. "I literally watched you die. I'm not doing that again. I'm… I'm keeping myself here, and I'm keeping you here, too."

She closes her eyes.

"I just want to go to sleep," she whispers, her head falling forward, eyes closing. Stiles has never seen her with so little energy. He has never seen her this empty. It drains him of everything he has; everything he so desperately wants to say. "Please, can I go to sleep?"

Ignoring his dry throat, Stiles nods.

"You have to stay here tonight, though," Scott says. "You can't go back to your mom yet."

Stiles eyes dart up to Malia, but she's just watching the way Lydia leans against Stiles. Reflexively, he tightens his arm around her waist. Malia looks up at him, then shrugs one shoulder, offering him a small, sad smile.

It feels final when Stiles breathes out, turning his attention back to Lydia.

"You can sleep in my bed," he murmurs to her. "I'm sorry."

She nods, reaching up to rub at her eyes.

"Can you help me get to bed?"

"I'll show everybody out," Scott says. "You two go ahead. We'll figure out a backstory tomorrow, when Lydia's feeling better."

When Lydia slips her hand into Stiles', sleepily leaning on him, he gives Scott a brief nod of agreement before he wraps his fingers more tightly around hers and pulls her towards his bedroom.

"You need to sleep too," Lydia says, words slurred. "You haven't slept since I died."

There's something hilariously confusing about that sentence. Stiles chokes down a laugh.

"How would you know that?" Stiles asks, opening the door to his room. Lydia walks over to the bed immediately, sliding under the covers and curling towards the pillow that Stiles uses, nudging it with her nose.

"I pay attention to you."

She says it offhandedly, like it isn't the most important thing he's ever heard, and for the first time since Lydia died, he feels warm again.

"You should go to sleep."

"You should, too." She opens her eyes. "Come here, Stiles."

He swallows.

"Are you-?"

"You brought me back to life. The least I can do is let you sleep in your own bed."

Stiles pulls back the comforter even though he's still wearing the same clothes he's been wearing for the past few days. Some of Lydia's blood is on his flannel. Irked by this, Stiles shucks it off, leaving him in the t-shirt that is underneath it.

Lydia's nose bumps into his shoulder, and he can see that she's fading into sleep as she shifts towards his warmth. Uncaring about consequences, Stiles kisses her forehead, brushing wet hair away from her face.

"If I go to sleep, will you promise to be here when I wake up?" he asks.

"Mhm," Lydia murmurs. "Promise."

"Okay," he agrees. "I'll sleep."

The panic that clenches at his chest at not being able to see her lessens when he can smell the shampoo on the pillow next to him. With Lydia's body curled around his, Stiles falls asleep.

* * *

 

There's dread pinching at Stiles' gut, twisting it around until it wrenches him awake. He doesn't understand why he is wracked with guilt, but it makes him draw his knees towards himself, as if he's trying to use his limbs to shield out the anxiety which is violently tearing at his stomach. It's not like Stiles isn't used to this. He feels this all the time. It belongs to him, some extra piece that has been clicked into his being.

But he's in his bed, head on his pillow, and his hand is on the warm space that had just been occupied by Lydia's body, and-

Lydia.

Stiles startles the rest of the way awake, shooting up in bed and reaching for the lamp on his bedside table. His bedroom door is open, and Lydia isn't in bed next to him. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, listening, and then he can hear the floorboard in the kitchen squeaking, just as it always does for those who don't know where to step.  _Shit._

Shoving the covers back, Stiles leaps out of bed and catapults himself out the door of his bedroom. His heart is slamming into his ribcage as he stumbles down the stairs and into the kitchen. Lydia releases a startled gasp when Stiles turns on the light to the kitchen. She is stationed at the entryway to the front hall, and she turns towards him when he barks out her name, his voice confused.

"You said you'd stay," he says, squinting at her in the bright light of the kitchen. "Lydia, you promised."

"I lied," she says flatly. She has changed back into the clothes that she was wearing when she died. Now she wraps her green cardigan tighter around her body, hugging it to herself as if she's trying to protect herself from Stiles. "You brought me back to life."

"Yeah."

"What… what were you thinking? Why do you think that I deserve to be brought back to life over all of the people we know who have died? I… I don't… I shouldn't… they had to  _stay dead_ , Stiles. Why couldn't I?"

"Because I didn't let you."

"Why?"

"Because… because  _you_. It was you, Lydia. You were dead."

"And, what? You decided to bring me back because I'm some stupid childhood crush, so you felt like you deserved to fulfill that fantasy?"

Her words crash into him violently, causing Stiles to take a step backwards.

"You're  _Lydia_ ," he says, trying to get her to understand. She laughs derisively.

"And that makes it okay for you to do this? I never asked you to do this, Stiles."

"I don't care," he says, shaking his head. "I don't care if you- what, you don't think this is fair? That's too damn bad, Lydia. I don't care that you don't think it's fair. I don't want to live in this world without you in it, and I… I don't care what happens to me. I just can't do this. I can't be here without you."

"So, basically, you brought me back for the most ridiculously selfish reason that exists in this universe. The grim reaper stole your fucking  _security blanket_."

"You're not my security blanket!" he growls. "Shit, I get that you're mad, but this isn't about me. This is about you."

"No, Stiles. This is all you. This is you. Because if it was up to me, I would be six feet under right now. But you couldn't let that go."

"I told you. I told you that if you died I would lose my shit."

"So you grieve! You grieve like everybody else does! Like Scott did, and Mr. Argent, and Ethan, and Erica's parents."

"Maybe I'm not as good as them. Because I wasn't going to do that."

"What if you hadn't known about Theo's serum?"

She's shaking, and he's not sure if it's cold or anger, but he can feel fury freezing over in all of his veins because Stiles feels like he's going to start vomiting all over again. Lydia was  _dead_. Lydia was dead, and now she's screaming at him, and he is so glad she's breathing that he doesn't care what she does anymore, as long as she's safe.

"But I did."

"What if you hadn't?"

"I would have found another way."

"What if you couldn't?"

He stares at her. He doesn't know.

"I don't know."

Lydia leans her head against the wall, rocking it back and forth, and he can see tears sliding down her cheeks.

"I feel… different," she says, voice small. "I'm not supposed to be here anymore."

"You are," Stiles insists, feeling his throat tighten. "It was two days."

She rolls her head towards him in disbelief, still using the wall for support.

"I shouldn't be here." And Lydia slides down to the floor, curling her hands into fists as she hugs her arms and legs tightly to her body. "I shouldn't… shouldn't…"

Stiles moves closer, sinking onto the ground in front of her, not letting himself touch any part of Lydia's body.

He crosses his legs, twisting his fingers together.

"I know."

* * *

 

Scott is waiting at Stiles' locker by the time Stiles gets to school. From the look on Scott's face, Stiles already knows what he's going to say. His best friend is almost mournful as Stiles approaches, setting his face into a determined line as Scott offers him a half-assed smile.

There used to be days when they both could sit on the floor, eating junk food and listening to classic rock, and Stiles could get Scott to smile so big that it lit up his whole face. Even when things got shitty, they could always snap back into place like elastics. And they had needed that. Depended on it, even.

It fizzles out senior year until there is nothing left but the grim look on Scott's face.

"Lydia is coming back today," he says. "She told me last night."

"Alright," Stiles says, twiddling the dial on his locker. It swings open, and he sets his backpack on the ground and sifts through it until he finds his book for math. It's heavy, and he doesn't want to have to carry it around all day while he goes to his other classes. He's going to put it in his locker, and that way it will be easier when he… when he sees Lydia. For the first time. Since that night on the floor.

It's been ten days since they made up an excuse for her mother and Lydia had returned home, away from Stiles. He hasn't so much as set eyes on her since then, and he knows that it's because she doesn't want to see him. Scott and Kira have both been over multiple times, and Stiles knows that Lydia is okay, but she doesn't want to see him.

Doesn't want to be around him.

Doesn't want to be with him.

He doesn't exactly know what he was expecting. Scott had warned him, over and over again, that it wasn't going to be a perfect fantasy when he brought Lydia back. And Stiles wouldn't sacrifice it or do anything differently. He wouldn't  _not_ bring her back just because she won't speak to him anymore, much less admit that she had told him she was in love with him before she died.

But he doesn't know why it has to play out this way, and there is something wrenchingly lonely about having to hear about how Lydia is faring via Scott.

"I hope she has a great first day," Stiles says, voice cold, and Scott offers him puppy-dog worthy sad eyes as he stares up at Stiles. "Dude. What?"

"Are you going to be okay?" Scott asks, hitching his backpack over his shoulders. Stiles slams the door to his locker shut, wincing too hard when the sound resounds through the hallway.

"I'm fine," he says stiffly. "I don't know why you would think I'm not fine."

"I wouldn't be fine," Scott comments, voice almost, but not quite, neutral.

"Well, luckily for all of us, I am a  _fine_ kind of guy," says Stiles, beginning to walk down the hallway towards his first class.

"Nope," Scott disagrees. "You're not. You're the kind of guy who pretends to be fine until he explodes and his fine-ness ends up screwing things up even worse. And then he goes back to pretending to be fine until there's just piles and piles and piles of  _fine_ , and none of it is fine at all."

Stiles glares at Scott.

"Really, dude?"

"Admit that you feel like garbage and I could consider leaving you alone," Scott says.

"Not gonna happen," Stiles says. "Hey, look, there's Kira! Go ask her if she's fine."

Lydia is standing next to Kira, and the sight of her almost makes Stiles crash into a doorway. She is wearing a short dress with high heels, and her hair is curled like she used to wear it junior year. She seems... soft. Maybe it's the way she's done her makeup, or the fact that the dress is just about as tight as a wetsuit would be, but suddenly Lydia seems so much more alive than the girl who had cried on his floor ten days ago, or the girl who had fallen asleep next to him, swimming in his clothes.

She swallows hard when she sees him and does not offer him a smile. For the first time, Stiles wonders if Lydia is afraid of him. If that's why she's been keeping away from him- or maybe that's why she's looking at him like he's something dangerous that is inching too close despite the fact that they are on opposite ends of the hallway.

For the first time, Stiles starts to think that maybe he had lost control when he had decided to bring Lydia back.

"I'm gonna go," he says, knocking a fist against Scott's arm as he turns around and heads down the hallway. "I'll talk to you later."

Stiles twists on his heel and heads down the hallway, feeling sick to his stomach. He wants to turn around and ask Lydia to tell him if she still looks at him the same way. He wants to ask Scott if he had done the right thing by bringing her back. He wants to know if everything has changed permanently because of two days in their lives that Stiles doesn't count as days because Lydia wasn't even there

But he already knows the answer.

"You smell terrible."

Malia.

"Anxiety," says Stiles flatly, playing along.

"I wanted to talk to you about Theo."

He startles.

"What?"

"Theo," Malia repeats, taking it literally. Stiles glances around at the other students in the hallway, but none of them are paying the two of them any attention. He grabs Malia by the wrist and pulls her into the first empty classroom he finds, slamming the door shut behind them once they get inside.

"You can't just say his name like that in the hallway," Stiles hisses. "Jesus Christ, Malia."

She rolls her eyes.

"Why are you always like this?"

Stiles shakes out his hands slightly, hoping they'll stop feeling numb at some point.

"Like what?"

She tilts her head to the side, thinking.

"Like… like a livewire. Like you're ready to explode at anyone just for breathing."

Stiles shrugs.

"I don't know."

"I took care of the knife," Malia says.

Stiles sits on the teacher's desk, burying his head in his hands.

"Are you gonna tell Scott?"

"No. But you should."

"He's not going to understand."

"He's going to wonder where the hell Theo went after he gave you that serum."

"I told Scott that he just took some money from me and left."

"Because lying is so much easier than telling the truth," Malia says, and Stiles would be proud of her for being facetious if he had any room for an emotion aside from anxiety.

"Lying is so much easier than telling him I killed someone."

"We," Malia corrects.

"I," he repeats.

"I didn't stop you."

"I wouldn't have let you."

She walks towards the door, then pauses, her fingers wrapped around the handle.

"I wonder if he had anyone who would have killed somebody to bring him back to life."

* * *

 

Lydia isn't pretending.

Stiles knows this because, when he gets out of his car, he can see how hunched over her body is as she sits on his front stoop. The rain is warm for early April, but Lydia is tucked into herself, her arms criss-crossing over each other. She's not wearing the tight dress that she wore to school, or high heels. Stiles has noticed how much more revealing her clothes have gotten lately, and he knows it's because she is using them to protect herself. But when she looks up at him, her face illuminated by the porch light, he see that she isn't wearing makeup. She's in a simple shirt tucked into a loose skirt, and she's wearing ballet flats. Her hair had been curled earlier today, but the rain has flattened it out.

Maybe at some point, Lydia had wanted to be somebody different around Stiles. But they've been too bare with each other now, and it's over. He knows. He knows all of her pieces, and he knows that she knows that he still wants her.

She's the barest version of Lydia Martin, the most vulnerable, and she is sitting on his front stoop.

"What are you doing out here?" he calls out to her, slamming the door to his jeep shut. Lydia stands up as he approaches, and even two steps up on the front porch, she is barely as tall as he is.

"I know about Theo," she says, her voice shaking. "I know you killed him to save me. To protect Scott."

"Who-?"

"I've been thinking," Lydia says, speaking over him.

"When are you not?" replies Stiles, because he's more focused on the way her lips are quivering than he is on coming up with a snappy comeback.

"Stiles, I'm not going to lie and say that I'm not mad," Lydia tells him. "I'm… I'm furious. I shouldn't be here."

Somehow, he knows it's right to grab her hand and lower his voice.

"I want you here."

She shakes her head.

"I know," she says, and when he sees that her eyes are open to him as they search his face, his stomach jolts in a way that feels completely foreign despite the fact that she used to make him feel that way all the time. He remembers crouching at the edge of his bed and telling her that he would go back and search the school all night to prove that Lydia had had a good hunch. It is a feeling isolated to moments when everything is  _good_ , not clouded with anxiety and harshness, and Stiles can't remember the last time she had made him feel quite like this.

"Lydia, do you want to go inside the-?"

"Are you going to apologize?" she asks, cutting him off. Stiles shakes his head. "Do you regret it?"

He quirks half a smile.

"I'm talking to you, aren't I?"

Lydia laughs, and there's something breathless about this whole thing. Every part of it.

"It's raining, and I'm laughing, and you're holding my hand," she says. "And I know I wouldn't have any of this at all if you hadn't done what you did. But, Stiles, it was crazy."

He wants to shake off her words like he is shaking rain out of his hair. He wants to say that he is crazy about her, but that would invalidate all of the millions of other reasons he had brought Lydia back to life, so much bigger than anything labelled "crazy" has ever been.

Encompassing. Enduring. Consuming. Not crazy.

"It was insane," he agrees.

"My mom doesn't know I was dead," she admits, her eyes sad all of a sudden. "And Kira won't talk about it, and Scott cringes every time I bring it up, and I… I  _missed_ you, Stiles. I missed you so fucking much. I don't know when you became ingrained in me, but I was trying to fall asleep last night and I realized that I couldn't stop thinking about the way you were breathing in my ear when I slept next to you."

He doesn't know what to say. He stares at her, at the rain that is pounding on her head, slipping and sliding into her mouth.

"You shouldn't have left," he grumbles. Lydia smiles and tilts her head to the side, reaching a hand up to stroke Stiles' cheek like she had when she had just come back to life. She seems so much more awake now as she stares at him. "You shouldn't keep leaving me."

"I won't," she whispers. He can barely hear her over the rain. "I don't want to leave you. I  _missed_ you."

Lydia is getting closer. She's getting too close. Stiles can't breathe as her eyes flicker to his bottom lip, and he licks it nervously, tasting the rain on his tongue as he does so.

"I missed you too."

"Make me feel something," Lydia says, eyes bright as she brings them back up to his. "Come on, Stiles. Make me feel alive."

He lurches forward and kisses her, tasting rain and the salt of tears on her lips. Lydia brings her hands around the back of his head and grips his wet hair tightly with her fingers, pressing her body against his. Stiles can hear her making small whimpering noises in her throat as he consumes himself with kissing her, putting everything into it, leaning all the way until he has toppled into insanity with Lydia Martin.

She's gasping for breath when he pulls away, grinning with two raised eyebrows.

"What do you think?" she asks.

"I think I'm in love with you," he replies.

"I think I already knew that," Lydia says over the rain. "Tell me something I don't know."

He kisses her again, backing her up to the front door of his house, and Lydia kisses him back eagerly, panting into his mouth.

"Lydia-"

"You didn't bring me back for this. I know."

"Right."

"But.. more. More of this. All of this. I want this."

His smirk matches hers.

"So you do love me."

Lydia kisses her way to his ear, stretching on her tip-toes to be able to reach.

"Come on, Stiles," she whispers, and he shudders into her touch. "More. Because I love you, and I'm not going to stop."

* * *

 

He gets snagged on Lydia so easily. It's the addiction he's always had, but Stiles doesn't think he's ever experienced it as strongly as he does when she is pressing kisses all over his skin, covering him with her lips. She seems to revel in her ability to touch him like this, so simply and intimately. She has a look on her face that Stiles is probably mirroring with his own expression. It is disbelief and delight and there's a note of eager calm, which would never have made sense to him before he felt Lydia's chest pressing against his as she kissed him like they had hours to just lazily slide their lips together, learning each other.

They've moved past the animal instinct of the first time, the second time, and now they are silly and sleepy, lying on Stiles' bed as two shell-shocked people who don't know how they got there. Stiles wonders if Lydia had been planning on having sex with him when she had showed up at his doorstep. But then he feels her pressing her smile into his shoulder, and he decides not to ask. It doesn't matter. What matters is that he can almost feel the glow that she is feeling, just by seeing the look on her face.

"You're not scared of me," he surmises, feeling a lump rise in his throat. "After everything."

Lydia rests her chin on his chest, twisting her mouth to the side as she stares up at him. She seems so soft, suddenly- from her eyes, to her smile, to her voice when she finally speaks.

"Am I supposed to be?"

"I am."

Lydia raises one eyebrow quizzically.

"Why?"

Stiles thinks. Slowly, and carefully, because he can't mess this moment up.

"I'm scared of what I would do to protect you," he tells her. Lydia's eyes darken for just a moment, but then she shakes her head, and when she rubs her thumb across his collarbone, it is gentle still. "Not just you. My dad and Scott and Melissa. And you. Always you."

Lydia presses a kiss to his chest. Stiles closes his eyes. He can feel the shift occurring even as he lies there, stroking Lydia's hair, and he can't quite define it but it feels like the earth has shifted and the only thing that has stayed still is this tiny bed with two pieces of damaged goods hidden under the covers.

"Stiles, I… maybe you don't want to hear this, but I think I should say it. Just so we're clear." He blinks at her, waiting. "I've thought about it a lot. And I can't see myself reacting any differently than you did. If I lost you- no. If I lost you and I knew there was a way to get you back, I would do it. In a heartbeat. For the most selfish reasons possible. But also for Scott, and for your dad, and for Mrs. McCall. But mostly for me. Because I know it's wrong, but… I would choose you. Over science, and destiny, and every single person who threw the odds at me because they expected it to stop me. I would choose you."

He squints at her.

"And are you scared of  _that_?"

Lydia nods, serious.

"Actually… terrified." Stiles chuckles, and she shakes with laughter on top of him, disbelieving. "No, really, thanks for asking."

He covers his eyes with his hand.

"Yeah. You're welcome. Good to know I'm not the only maniac in Beacon Hills."

Lydia pries his hand away from his eyes.

"Hey," she says. "You're going to have to be patient with me, okay? I'm not used to…" She trails off, gesturing to the two of them. "This."

"Pillow talk?" Stiles laughs, but Lydia nods seriously.

"Right. Pillow talk."

"Oh," he says, suddenly not sure what to say.

"I wasn't ready before," Lydia says, rolling off of him and lying on her back on the pillow next to him. "But I spent so much time being in love with you that I stopped being able to choose. And now we're here."

He likes 'here' so much that he doesn't think she will ever find him complaining.

* * *

 

Stiles sits behind Lydia in English, and when he rests his chin on the surface of his desk, pretending to read, he can play with her hair where it rests in waves above her elbows. She doesn't say anything, but he feels content. Their teacher drones on about Hamlet, but Stiles has seen the Lion King at least twice, so instead of paying attention he ties little knots in the end of Lydia's hair, just to see if any of them stay.

They don't. They unravel, perfect just like always, and by the time the bell has rung, Stiles thinks that he may have accidentally made Lydia's hair look even better than it did before. Lydia, however, doesn't seem to think so. She stands up and groans at how tousled the ends are, glaring at Stiles pointedly as she fixes them.

"Did you learn anything today?" she asks, completely sarcastic, and it kind of seems stupid because they have probably experienced more than their teachers, but Lydia still sits up straight in class and pays attention to everything. Stiles loves that about her.

"Nah," he says. "But if you want, we can try something new."

Lydia looks suspicious, and rightly so.

"What?" she asks.

Stiles holds his hand up and wiggles his fingers at her.

"C'mon. You know you wanna."

"Oh God," Lydia complains, but she entwines their fingers together and presses a quick kiss to the top of Stiles' hand before she grabs her purse and pulls it over her shoulder. "Lunch?"

"Sure," he replies easily, but there's a small part of him that is wondering if Lydia's hands had always been this cold, or if it was just since she died.

It feels idiotic, in the most ridiculously good way, to hold Lydia's hand as they walk down the hallway. It isn't a logistically good idea, and if it wasn't a cool day out, Stiles is pretty sure their hands would be disgustingly sweaty. But he likes this so much- likes that underneath all of the complications and worry and difficulties, Lydia can hold his hand in the school hallway and everything can feel like it's going to be okay. At least for a little while.

They turn down the hallway to the lunchroom, and Stiles takes his seat next to Scott, feeling, inexplicably, like everything is happening right on schedule.

Okay, so he and Scott had gotten into some pretty deep shit earlier in the year. That had sucked. And Stiles had dated someone who wasn't Lydia, which wasn't a great idea because he'd half-assed his way through that entire relationship. And Lydia had died. That hadn't been great, either. But it's okay now. Liam and Hayden are at the other end of the lunch table, comparing test grades, and Mason and Malia are discussing an episode of some reality TV show that Mason had turned Malia onto. Scott and Kira are smiling at Stiles and Lydia as they settle in across from each other, and everything is okay. Everything is going to go exactly accordingly to plan.

Except Stiles is reaching over to Kira's plate to steal one of her French fries when he suddenly feels icy cold, and anxiety begins seeping through his veins. He's startled by it, because he is feeling every single piece of it, and yet he is somehow detached. He glances up at Scott, as if his best friend could supply him with answers, but Scott is glancing down at his cell phone, replying to a text, and Stiles doesn't get it, doesn't understand-

Oh. Lydia.

She's sitting silently next to him, her arms and legs drawn stiffly to her body, and everything seems relatively normal except she hasn't touched her wrap and is staring at her bottle of water like it is the most terrifying thing she's ever seen. Stiles touches her leg and Lydia startles, jumping as she turns to look at him.

It's not normal. She's not normal. They're not normal.

"What's going on?" Stiles asks, voice low, and Lydia shakes her head.

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, Lydia."

He sounds too impatient, too annoyed, but he can't help it. They're past this. They're not going to hover in an in-between anymore. She's going to tell him.

"I don't know," she whispers to him, but she doesn't look away, and her eyes are desperate in a way that Stiles can feel in his core.

"Okay," he replies, and he grabs her hand and pulls her up. "We're going to head out," he says to the group. "Seeya."

Lydia offers Kira a smile that looks more like a wince, and Stiles puts a hand on her back to show her that he's right behind her as he follows her into the foyer of the school. She walks until they come to an isolated alcove under one of the staircases, and Lydia presses her forehead against the wall, breathing hard, her fists clenched.

Stiles lingers at the entryway to the alcove, watching her small body rock with her breaths. He wants to stay there, shielding her, protecting her, but instead he moves forward and stands behind her, putting his hands on her waist and pressing his forehead to her temple.

"I don't know," is the first thing Lydia says. "I don't know, Stiles."

"What don't you know?" he asks, trying to keep his voice soothing. Her breath stutters.

"I don't know why, but it was… I was overwhelmed. I don't know." He doesn't think he's ever heard her say those words so many times in a row. Even when she was trying to figure out her banshee powers, there had been a part of her which knew she could do it. The frustrating thing had been that it was on the tip of her tongue, not that it was unreachable. Now, Lydia's eyes are squeezed shut as she frowns at the wall, and there isn't an answer tantalizingly close. "I feel like I'm watching my own life… like I'm, I don't know, a tourist. A foreigner. A-"

"A ghost," Stiles finishes for her, mouth dry as he says it. "You feel like a ghost."

Lydia turns around, nodding at him. She finds his hands on her waist and won't meet his eyes as she covers them with her cold fingers.

"I keep thinking about Allison," says Lydia. "Being around the pack, being in this building… I think I keep losing track of time, Stiles, and I think it's junior year and she's going to be sitting right behind me, wearing a pair of shoes I want to borrow. Like everything's normal. But it's not, because I should be gone, with her, and instead I'm here with you, and it's not the same even though nothing really changed."

Stiles hesitates, not sure if he wants to say what he's about to say.

"Before you died-" (they both cringe) "-you said… you told me that you had always expected this to happen. Us. You don't think that, maybe, this is just how it had to happen all along? Like… maybe we aren't going against the universe by bringing you back. Maybe we were supposed to do this, Lyds."

She smiles, but her lips are still trembling.

"The only time I feel normal is when I'm with you," Lydia admits. "But… you're not the only reason I'm here, Stiles. And you can't be. I need to go to school and have a career, eventually, and have friends. I need to stop panicking every time I walk through these doors. I need to stop wanting so badly to avoid the pack."

"And you gotta be honest with me," Stiles adds on. "Because I had no idea this was happening until…"

He trails off, and Lydia frowns.

"Wait, how did you know?" she says. "Was it the look on my face or something?"

"Kind of," Stiles replies slowly. "But it was also… I felt this nervousness that wasn't mine, you know? Like, I could tell it didn't belong to me."

Lydia sighs, knocking her head back against the wall.

"Deaton?" she says to the ceiling.

"Deaton," Stiles agrees.

* * *

 

"Would you  _focus_?"

Lydia snaps Stiles back to the present with her voice, a mixture of annoyance and endeared amusement. His eyes, which had been wandering into corners of her childhood bedroom, shoot back to Lydia's face, and Stiles straightens up, clearing his throat.

"Sorry."

"You don't look it," Lydia complains, but she's smiling a bit as she straightens up too, the bed shifting slightly with their movements.

They are sitting cross-legged across from each other, with two sets of hands tangled together in Lydia's lap as they half focus on what they're doing and half wonder who is going to break first and throw the important stuff out the window in favor of making out.

Stiles and Lydia both suspect it will be him, but whatever. Maybe the underdog will come out of left field and Lydia will be the one to tackle him. Stiles would fucking  _love_ that. It takes a miracle to distract Lydia Martin, and he has spent years wanting to be that particular miracle.

"I don't really know," Stiles tells her. "Maybe the emotion isn't strong enough. Deaton said it had to be a really strong emotion for it to work."

Lydia frowns, looking mildly offended.

"What do you mean 'the emotion isn't strong enough?' I know how to feel something strongly."

"I'm just saying, maybe it has to be organic. Like, it isn't enough for you to think 'surprise!' You have to actually, genuinely be surprised."

"Stiles Stilinski, if you have Scott McCall in werewolf form standing behind me about to growl, I swear on my own grave-"

"First off, you don't have a grave so you can't use that," Stiles says. "Secondly, I didn't do that. That would be fuckin' crazy."

"You brought me back from the dead."

"You heard me, Martin."

Lydia groans.

"Okay. Just, close your eyes. Concentrate. Try to separate the emotions that you're feeling from the ones that I'm feeling."

Stiles closes his eyes. He breathes. He  _concentrates_. And he proceeds to think about tuna fish sandwiches, lightsabers, and Lydia's breasts. In that order.

He pops one eye open.

"Any chance you're horny?"

Lydia cocks her head, shaking it with disbelief.

"That's what you got? Horny?"

"Look, I don't think we can practice this, Lydia. I think it's just one of those weird things that we're going to have to get used to."

She slides off of the bed and begins pacing, leaving Stiles' eyes to wander around her bedroom again. He's been in here a few times, but never this long. And, with all his stupidly desperate hoping, he had never thought he would actually be in here as someone who Lydia had fallen asleep against. He had never thought that her bedroom would feel comfortable to him, because it was Lydia's home and he has found a home in her over and over again since they had decided to be together.

The world looks kinda different when Lydia Martin is in love with Stiles Stilinski. He doesn't know why, but he feels like he has opened his eyes into something different, and now he feels actual dread when he thinks of ever having to go back to a place where Lydia doesn't care about him. He knows what it is like to want her, but now that he has her, everything is heightened. Everything feels like it's going to be okay, even when it's not.

Maybe that's why he didn't even panic when Deaton admitted that there were multiple side effects to the tether that they hadn't been forced to pay attention to back when they were performing it in the first place. That, now that Lydia was tied to Stiles in even more ways, her feelings were also tied to his. When Lydia feels something strongly, Stiles can feel it too. And vice versa, terrifyingly enough.

"It's like a thread," Lydia says carefully. She talks with her hands when she is trying to think as she speaks, and Stiles watches the way her fingers curl gently into her palm, punching it for added effect. "It's like this extra something pulling at my brain, and then I just have to figure out what it's making me feel and I know what you're feeling." She stops walking and turns to him, crossing her arms over her chest. "That's so  _weird._ "

Stiles shrugs.

"I played chess with my own head once," he says. "This seems pretty on par."

Lydia's hands fall to her side, and then she's just staring at him, a small smile on her face.

"We'll figure it out," she says, her voice so tender that Stiles doesn't know if he can keep looking at her without jumping off of her bed and touching her. "We always do."

"Death cannot stop us," Stiles jokes, and it's supposed to be all dramatic and funny, but his voice breaks and he thinks about Lydia lying on that table, cold and alone and there had been a possibility that she was forever, permanently, somewhere that he could not reach. "Fuck," he says. "I'm sorry."

"We should be able to joke about it eventually," Lydia says, and it sounds like a question.

"Right," Stiles agrees, half-smiling. "I mean, the alternative is thinking about what I did, which is…"

"Exactly," Lydia says, voice cracking. She presses her eyes shut with the heels of her hands, focusing. "Okay.  _That_  I can feel."

Stiles grins painfully.

"Yeah?"

"Mhm."

"Cool."

Lydia walks back over to the bed and settles across from him again, taking his hands back into her lap and drawing patterns on his palms with her fingers. It tickles too much, but Stiles isn't planning on moving anytime soon.

"So," says Lydia. "You are never, for as long as we are alive, going to be able to lie to me. How do you feel about that?"

The smile slides off of his face.

"Aw, shit."

"That sounds about right."

"Let's just get this out of the way," Stiles says, nodding seriously. "Yes, I did eat all the Nutella. No, I'm not sorry. Yes, I would do it again."

Lydia rolls her eyes, falling backwards onto her pillows.

"That's the first thing you think of."

"What else is there to lie to you about aside from Nutella?" Stiles asks, propping himself up on the pillow next to Lydia.

"I'll just keep it hidden," she rationalizes as he moves Lydia's hair off of her shoulder and starts kissing her neck.

"I'll find it," Stiles replies darkly, pausing what he's doing. "I'll always find it."

Lydia smashes a pillow into his head, her back arching as she laughs, and when they have sex, Stiles can feel absolutely everything she is feeling towards him. If she loved him any less, it would probably be different. But when their feelings combine in his head and swirl together, separate but theirs, and so overwhelming, he doesn't feel anything but Lydia.

He just feels safe.

* * *

 

Lydia is dead.

Stiles can't feel any part of himself anymore- can't feel his toes, or his heartbeat, can't even engage with his own mind, because all he can feel inside of his head is Lydia, lying on the ground, blood everywhere. It's all over his hands, caked under his fingers, and he doesn't have enough breaths to give to her. He isn't enough. He's never been enough.

He wants to sit up in bed, but he is paralyzed, panting there as he tries to shake it all off of himself. Except there isn't any way to shake off the vacant look in her eyes or the beads of sweat cooling on her forehead as she exists as nothing but a corpse.

Lydia is dead. Lydia is gone. Stiles doesn't know how to be here either.

When Stiles' phone lights up on his bed, vibrating loudly near his ear, he nearly leaps out of his skin, startled by the noise. Everything is black except for Lydia's face as it pops up on the screen. His fingers are quivering as he swipes them across the pad, lifting the phone to his ear.

"Hello?" he whispers into the darkness, and he expects nobody to be able to hear because Lydia is  _dead_ , she isn't calling him, she's  _dead_.

"Are you okay?" Her voice is frenzied as she breathes his name into the phone. "Stiles, what's wrong?"

"N-nothing," he says, wanting her to speak again so that he can hear her voice. Lydia takes a shaky breath, and it is enough to get Stiles' heart to calm down slightly.

"Bullshit," she replies, a crazed note to her voice as she continues, disbelief coloring her tone. "You woke me up."

"Sorry."

"Is someone attacking you?" Lydia demands to know.

"No!" Stiles promises. "It's not that. I'm just in my bed. I was asleep." He feels thick tears streaking down his cheeks, and Stiles tries to cast them away by rubbing roughly at them with his palms. "I'm sorry for waking you up," he says, because he is, but now that they are here, he can't imagine how he could have gotten through the rest of the night without hearing her voice.

"What's going on, Stiles?" Lydia asks, and she sounds so uncertain that he feels like he can't lie to her. Shouldn't lie to her. If she's going to be in this with him, she needs to know, anyways.

"I keep having dreams about you being dead."

There's a long pause during which Stiles listens to Lydia breathing.

"This isn't the first one?"

"It's the first one since we started…" He wants to say 'going out,' but that trivializes it. He wants to say 'sleeping together,' but that isn't it either. Stiles doesn't quite know how to verbalize the enormity of what they have started; doesn't know how to tell her that he can feel how important it is when she kisses him, or when she tells him something he hadn't known about her before, or when he gets to listen to her snoring lightly when she falls asleep while they're watching a movie. "This. Since we started this."

"That might explain why I didn't feel it before," Lydia mutters to herself.

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, I would have felt it if it had happened recently. But before, when you were experiencing this, I didn't pick up on it at all, even though we still had the tether."

"Why?" he asks, even though he already knows the answer. He almost doesn't want to hear her say it, because to acknowledge that it was real would also be to acknowledge that it was Stiles' fault that Lydia had felt that way.

"My emotions… they were all over the place. I felt like you did just now, but it was… it was a constant. I don't think I would have been able to tell your feelings from mine when they were exactly the same."

"Almost like a panic attack," Stiles fills in for her.

"It was like something was pressing down on my chest every moment of every day."

It takes several moments of dithering for Stiles to gather up the courage he needs to ask what he wants to ask.

"Do you ever still feel that way? Even now?"

Lydia doesn't respond.

* * *

 

"Are you sure this a good idea?" Scott asks. He's leaning on the island in Stiles' kitchen, eyes focused on the box of funfetti cake mix that has the directions listed on the back.

"Of course it's a good idea," Stiles replies around the spoonful of buttercream frosting that is in his mouth. "Cake is delicious."

Scott sets the box down on Stiles' counter and leans his elbows against it, staring at Stiles with a look of concern on his face.

"It's not about the cake."

Stiles scrunches his nose.

"It should  _always_ be about cake, Scotty."

"Dude."

Stiles sets down his spoon, shrugging his shoulders as he finally meets Scott's gaze.

"Okay," he says, giving up. "What?"

Now that Scott has Stiles' attention, he looks like he doesn't know what to do with it. He hesitates, face pinched with worry as he tries to figure out what he means to say. Stiles waits patiently, knowing that Scott always has to take his time these days. He doesn't like to speak incorrectly, or to say things he doesn't mean. The part of Scott McCall which had once been spontaneous and worry-free managed to vanish completely over the course of their senior year.

Stiles knows that a lot of this is his fault. He knows that he has ruined something that had been important to who Scott was, and who he was supposed to be. And it isn't all Stiles' fault, but sometimes he will look over at Scott and think about who he used to be and feel like a part of Stiles is gone as well. Like they vanished together, disappearing into werewolves and lies and blood spilled on pavement and moons that always seemed bigger than they actually were because Scott and Stiles were so, so scared.

Maybe they're not as scared anymore, now that they've been through the ringer. Or maybe they're more afraid than ever. What else is there to lose once you have already lost everything?

"It's just… it's Lydia."

Honestly, it usually is.

"We skipped her birthday when it happened in March," Stiles says, trying to keep his voice offhand, like he doesn't know what Scott means. "Remember? Everything was really fucking crazy, and we had just brought her back from the dead and Lydia and I weren't speaking to each other at that point, so there was nothing I could do about it, and we just skipped right over it."

"Right," Scott says. "I remember."

"But she lived to see another birthday," Stiles reminds him. "And we gotta celebrate that, dude. We gotta."

"I think you and Lydia should celebrate together," Scott concedes. "I think that's a really nice idea."

"But?"

"But I don't think she's going to want to celebrate with the rest of us."

Shit. Scott's noticed. Stiles wonders how much of the rest of the pack has noticed as well. Malia probably hasn't, because she's not the type to notice something like this. But Kira definitely has, if Scott has, and they've probably  _talked_ about it together, and Stiles should have come up with better excuses for why Lydia hasn't been spending any time with the pack.

After that first day at lunch, when Lydia had gotten overwhelmed by all of the people, she and Stiles had wordlessly walked to the library for the next lunch period. Now they sit on the floor in the same nook every day and watch stupid youtube videos that Stiles had stockpiled when he was fifteen and had no life. They talk about their classes- even though Lydia only has two, and one of them is with Stiles. And they don't talk about anything important, because they save that for after school, when they are either on Stiles' bed or Lydia's bed or in the back of the jeep, and it's truly just the two of them.

He loves it when it's just the two of them, when he doesn't have to speak louder than a whisper because he knows that, no matter what he says, Lydia will be paying attention to him. But then Stiles will go to Scott's house to talk about pack safety or to Kira's for a movie night, and Lydia will make excuse after excuse to not have to go with him.

Before, Stiles had thought that it might go away eventually. But now he thinks they're stuck with it, like they're stuck with the way Lydia's hand tightens in his whenever she approaches Beacon Hills High School and she has to be trapped in a building filled with demons. With the people who had died, with the person Lydia had used to be.

She tells him that, when she walks in here, she feels like all of the futures that are never going to happen are suddenly pressing down on her. And all he can do is kiss her hair and her cheekbones and her lips and think about how much he doesn't regret pulling her back to life. Maybe it's because he isn't the one experiencing these things. But he wouldn't take it back.

"I can't get her to spend time with any of you," Stiles says flatly, and he feels like a string has been cut, allowing his body to fall limply over the counter. At least Scott knows. At least Stiles doesn't have to explain what he is afraid of.

"We remind her of everyone," Scott states. "I know."

"She doesn't like talking to other people anymore." His voice is breaking. Stiles sits down on a stool. "I mean, it was sort of starting before she died… after Eichen she was almost afraid of strangers… and she never fully recovered from that. But now it's so much worse. Now she won't even talk to people who remind her of before."

"I'm sorry," Scott says. He's still gripping the box of cake mix. "Maybe she just needs something different."

"We're going to college in less than four months," Stiles says. "It couldn't get much more different than that."

They had both sent in their deposits to Stanford a few months before. Stiles isn't sure what it would have been like to go to college with Lydia before they had gotten together, but now it's bigger than that. Now they have this internal connection that is eternally pulling them together, and he thinks that being without Lydia would be impossible _._

He needs to be able to feel her emotions and text her or call her and ask her why she's feeling them. He can't stand the idea of not having that ease in his life; of having her emotions and not being privy to them. He thinks it would probably be stifling.

"Maybe it'll get better when she's been away from Beacon Hills for a while," Scott suggests hopefully. Stiles offers him a weak smile for his trouble. "But right now, let's get this cake made."

"You still want to make it?"

Scott shrugs.

"You can save me a piece, right?"

Stiles hands Scott his phone to choose a song with, then ducks down to grab a cake pan from the cabinet he's standing in front of.

"Of course," he says. "Can you grab the eggs?"

Scott turns on some punk rock and grabs the eggs from the fridge.

"So," he says. "How are things going with you and Lydia? You know. Aside from all that."

Stiles squints, considering this for a moment as he pours cake mix into a bowl.

"The other day, I felt this crazy guilt, like, clawing at me, you know? And I was like, 'Okay, it's either I forgot to do something really important, or Lydia is freaking out.'"

Scott laughs.

"What did you do?"

"I called her because it's way easier to question Lydia than to have to figure out what I forgot-"

"Sure, sure."

"-And when she picked up she sounded really nervous, so I was just like, 'What are you doing?'"

"And?"

"And it took me about five minutes of bugging her to finally get her to reveal that she had eaten an entire sleeve of oreos and that was why she was feeling so guilty."

Scott bangs a spoon on the counter to the drum beat of the song, and Stiles adds some air guitar for his benefit.

"Sounds confusing as hell," he says. "It's pretty cool, though, right? Once you guys figured out how to manage it."

"Definitely," replies Stiles. "Hey, are you and Kira doing good still?"

And for fifteen blissful minutes, things feel the way were always supposed to feel.

* * *

Math homework has always been the easiest to get through for Stiles, mostly because it doesn't leave room for his mind to wander. When he's reading a history textbook or an English novel, he'll jump around to a million places that expand upon the text but don't actually pertain to it. He collects information obsessively, unless it actually pertains to school. But math is the same symbols and shapes over and over again in an increasingly complicated manner, and if Stiles buckles down and powers through, he can usually get through at least one page of problems without opening his laptop in order to conduct research about the formation of the lampshade.

Tonight, however, he's feeling frustration that he would never normally associate with something as stupid as math homework. It's so off that Stiles knows it can only be Lydia's feeling, and it's driving him up the wall. Usually, by 2am, Lydia is asleep, and all of Stiles' emotions are his own. Tonight, however, he feels so bitterly annoyed that he can't focus on what he's doing, and that kind of annoyance can only be courtesy of one Lydia Martin.

She gets like this all the time, but tonight, Stiles is going to assume that it's because she can't sleep. Nothing pisses Lydia off more than not being in control of her own sleep schedule.

The first time it had happened, Stiles had been trying to fall asleep as well. But when he had felt the spike of bother that wasn't his own, he had assumed Lydia was just annoyed about something random and let it be. The second time, he hadn't been able to focus on the essay about wookies that he was reading, so he had called her and demanded that she calm the fuck down, which actually hadn't ended very well at all. But then Lydia had yelled at him until she was tired, and she had fallen asleep on the phone with him, and Stiles had been able to return to his wookie essay in peace.

Tonight, Stiles shuts off his desk lamp, grabs his keys, and scribbles a quick note for his dad, in case he wakes up and checks on him. If Lydia isn't going to be able to fall asleep, Stiles is going to take advantage of that. He is going to take every available opportunity to spend time with her, because Lydia had almost died without them ever being together, and Stiles isn't going to waste chance number two.

Or three. Or four. No matter how many deaths. No matter how many serums.

Beacon Hills is quiet at night. Growing up here, it had never really been that way, but now Stiles drives through the streets and finds that the old life seems to have vanished from them. People are shut into their houses, even though it's nearly summer. Kids who would normally already be celebrating the end of the school year are at home, tucked into their beds because they had been unfortunate enough to grow up in a town where the murder rate was obscenely high, and nobody really does anything past dark anymore.

Everybody knows someone who has died. Everyone has been affected somehow. The Nemeton is an infection on Beacon Hills, and as Stiles drives through the streets, tapping his fingers lightly along with the radio, he is looking at the symptoms that are still prevalent even without an alpha pack lurking around, or a kanima, or Theo Raeken.

Nothing is ever going to be the same again. But, as Stiles pulls into Lydia's driveway, he doesn't necessarily think that this is a bad thing. At least, not all around.

He grabs his phone from his dashboard and types her number in. Lydia picks up on the second ring, sounding relieved.

"Were the headlights that just pulled into my driveway yours?"

"Yeah," he responds, voice husky from having not spoken to anyone for several hours. "You wanna go for a ride?"

" _Yes_ ," Lydia says emphatically, and he sees her front door open as she hangs up the phone, walking down the steps two at a time. She is wearing leggings and the hoodie that she had stolen from him when they were juniors, and her hair is pulled away from her face in a braid. Stiles' stomach clenches with emotion just as Lydia's eyes lock on his, and for one moment, they both are feeling the exact same thing.

Then she breaks it by laughing, shaking her head, and pulling open the door of the car, kissing Stiles on the lips hastily, bumpily, before she goes for her seatbelt.

"Where are we going?"

"I dunno," Stiles replies, throwing the car into reverse and draping his arm over the back of Lydia's chair so that he can watch where he's going as he backs out of her driveway.

"Specific," Lydia comments dryly, rolling her window down and sticking her head out slightly.

"'Specific' is a very popular way to describe me, you know," Stiles tells her, dropping his hand from her seat and putting it on the stick shift. "Along with 'predictable' and 'calm.'"

"Three of your most outstanding qualities," agrees Lydia, the hum of laughter hidden in her voice. She reaches over to Stiles' radio and resets it to NPR. He bats her hand away and changes the channel. Lydia scoffs at the top 40 song that he begins bobbing his head to and turns the radio off altogether. "So," she says. "How did you know?"

"I was doing math homework and suddenly started feeling homicidal."

"So naturally that means your girlfriend can't sleep."

They both grin at the way she'd phrased it. Stiles thinks to himself that he wouldn't mind dying in this moment- at least he'd die happy. Then he  _remembers_ , and he tries to slap the thought out of his mind.

"I'm just an incredibly perceptive guy," Stiles responds, his voice not as silly as the words.

Lydia turns away from the window so that she can watch Stiles drive. Her hand wanders over to him, playing with the short hairs at the nape of his neck.

"This is still kind of strange," she says softly. "In a really fucking amazing way."

He wants to make a joke out of it, but he gets it. The other day, he'd been sitting in the library and he'd suddenly remembered the fact that he had actually had sex with Lydia Martin, and he'd burst out laughing.

Fuck.

"Life is weird," he says. He knows where he's going now, so he takes a right, humming to himself even though the radio isn't on.

Lydia sits up straighter when she sees where Stiles is headed, looking over at him with disbelief in her eyes.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really," Stiles replies gruffly, pulling into the parking lot and killing the engine. Lydia unbuckles her seatbelt and hops out of the car, sticking the landing and then turning to face Stiles.

"Where to first?" she asks.

"The swings," he says, raising his eyebrows. "Is that not the first place you go every time you're on a playground?"

Lydia glances over at the large building in which they'd attended elementary school.

"I haven't been back here since sixth grade," she admits. Stiles looks aghast.

"How have I failed you this deeply?"

She grabs his hand, swinging it back and forth until he makes a small noise of laughter in the back of his throat.

"I think you're doing fine, actually."

"What I lack in playgrounds I make up for in-"

"Ridiculousness," Lydia finishes for him. "Exactly."

"I was going to say foreplay, but that works too."

"Both are perfectly valid," Lydia decides, settling onto a swing. "You're a multiple-choice kind of guy."

Stiles sits on the swing next to her and begins pumping his legs.

"So you probably don't remember this, but you pushed me off of one of these bad boys when we were kids."

"I did?"

"Yeah. Cuz you were a fucking terror, even then."

She looks satisfied.

"Well, thank you."

He snorts.

"Thank my bruised knees."

"You were probably in my way," Lydia muses, voice getting breathier as her kicks start to get bigger. Stiles hasn't seen her look this goofy in years, and it hits him sharply, stabbing him with every pump of his legs through the air.

"Oh, I was definitely in your way."

"You still are," she says fondly, leaning back in the swing so that she can face the stars. "But I want to shove you less now."

His laugh echoes across the empty playground.

"That is, weirdly, the best description of us I have ever heard."

Lydia's braid is hanging towards the ground, almost brushing it as she slows down and lets the swing naturally propel her slowly back and forth. She tilts herself to the sky, her neck arched towards the moon, which is making her pale skin look like it's glowing.

Stiles thinks that this moment, this, right here, is why he saved her life. This is it. So they could have this. All of this.

"Bet I can jump further," Lydia challenges him, face totally deadpan.

"There's not a fucking chance," Stiles scoffs. "My legs are way longer than yours."

"So?" Lydia argues. "I'm Lydia Martin."

He pauses.

"That's actually a really good point."

"On the count of three," Lydia instructs.

Stiles wins. Then Lydia crawls over to him in the sand and kisses him, and he wins all over again. When he opens his eyes, she's hovering above him with a watery smile on her face and a light in her eyes that doesn't have anything to with the moon.

"Thank you for this. It was perfect."

"You sleepy yet?" Stiles asks, because he definitely is.

"Just about," Lydia says. "Seriously… how did you know to do this?"

Stiles is suddenly embarrassed because she hasn't stopped looking in his eyes and he doesn't know what she sees that he can't find.

"I don't know," he says honestly. "I just did."

"You just did?" Lydia repeats, sounding skeptical. "Okay, sure."

He strokes her cheekbone with his thumb and shrugs awkwardly.

"I would know you numb."

* * *

 

Stiles gets back from the pack meeting expecting to collapse into his bed and fall right asleep. Instead, he finds Lydia's car in his driveway, parked next to his dad's cruiser, and he opens the door to a house that smells like food.

It's kind of weird, because Stiles is usually the one who cooks, and he almost never comes home to a lit-up kitchen. Tonight, however, he finds Lydia sitting on the island, chatting with his father while he chops up some vegetables for a salad. On the table, there's a paper bag with grease stains on it, and Stiles can smell Chinese food.

He pauses in the doorway, hands on the straps of his backpack as he realizes that he isn't going to have this for much longer. In a month, he and Lydia are going to be graduating, and then they're going to be moving out of Beacon Hills and his dad is still going to be here. In this house.

All alone.

"Hi," Lydia says, turning around and offering him a brilliant smile at the exact moment when Stiles considers turning around and heading to his room under the pretense of setting his backpack down. But of course she had felt his upsurge of emotion, and Stiles can see the worry sharp in her eyes even as her lips curve up. "How was the meeting?"

"Great," Stiles replies, throat still tight. To hide his face, he slides the backpack off of his shoulders and kicks it into the corner by the wall before turning back to Lydia. "Um, yeah, it was fine." Lydia kicks her feet against the cabinets on the island as he walks up to her and gives her a kiss on the cheek to tell her hello. "Hi, dad."

"You didn't tell me Lydia was coming over tonight," his dad says, accusatory. "If she hadn't come over before I ordered, we would have been short on Chinese food."

Stiles wraps an arm around Lydia's waist, unable to help himself. He likes when she's eye level.

"I'm pretty impressed that she convinced you to make a salad, pops."

His dad shrugs, scooping up the celery and throwing it into a bowl that Lydia offers him.

"Well, we can't live on curly fries every day."

Stiles' mouth opens wide.

"That's what I say! Isn't that what I say?"

He looks wildly back at Lydia, but she puts a finger to his lips to shush him.

"Just accept the fact that I'm a better influence on your father than you are," she says flatly. "It's very simple once you embrace it."

Stiles can see his father's back shaking with laughter where he stands at the sink, washing a tomato.

"Unbelievable," he mutters.

Lydia moves her lips close to his ear, tickling him as she whispers.

"Do you know what I'm going to do know?" she asks rhetorically. "I'm going to get something I want."

He only has to wonder for a few seconds before Lydia kisses the tip of his nose and turns back to his dad.

"Sheriff," she says, "I was wondering if you happened to have any home videos of Stiles lying around."

Oh shit.

He turns around, thinking.

"We have some video tapes," he responds. "I think they're under the radio cabinet."

Lydia beams in thanks and hops off of the counter to go off in search for aforementioned baby tapes, and that is how they all end up perched in front of the TV, eating Chinese food out of takeout tins and watching little Stiles run around the house naked.

"This is literally the most humiliating thing I have ever been subjected to," he says flatly, from where he sits on the floor with his back against the couch. "I hate both of you."

Along with Scott, they're the people in the world Stiles loves most, but they don't need to know that. They're already way too pleased with themselves as it is.

"I'm sure you'll get over it," says Lydia, unconcerned as she reaches over to Stiles' lo mein and uses her chopsticks to pluck a piece of shrimp from the mess of noodles. His mouth pops open in indignance and he plunges his fork into a piece of her general tso's chicken and eats it before Lydia can protest.

She seems unperturbed by this, which makes Stiles think he is becoming too predictable to Lydia Martin.

"How did you become so good with chopsticks anyways?" he asks, an edge of disbelief to his voice because she can't be good at  _everything_. But Lydia just smiles at him and turns back to the screen where baby Stiles is toddling around his yard.

"He waves his arms around when he babbles," Lydia comments. "Some things don't change."

"I do not  _babble_."

"You babble."

"Wait, dad, is this the video where- aw, shit."

His question is answered when baby Stiles tugs off his own shirt and begins running around the lawn hollering at the top of his lungs. Lydia lets out a bark of laughter, sitting up straighter as Stiles trips over one of his toy trucks and flails around before falling flat on his face in the soft grass. He takes a moment to look around in shock, comprehending the fact that he is no longer running and is now on the ground. And then he looks towards the camera, presumably to where his parents are, and bursts into tears.

The camera is shoved into the Sheriff's arms as Claudia rushes over to her son and lifts him into her arms, murmuring soothing words into his ear while he cries.

Stiles doesn't remember much of this version of his mom. The straight brown hair and slight frame are recognizable to him, but the memories he has of her are ones where she is weaker. Smaller, somehow. He tries to block out most of the memories, but it's stuff like this that he never wants to let go of. The way his mom is stroking his face and whispering to him while his dad walks over with the camera, crouching on the ground next to them and pulling Stiles in for a hug. The screen goes dark as he turns of the camera, and Stiles isn't surprised when Lydia sets down her food and slides her hand into his.

He glances over at her, but she's still staring at the screen where the echoes of his family had been, her eyes seemingly focused on it. Stiles scuffs his foot across the floor, waiting for Lydia to come back. When she returns, she has eyes that are swimming with tears.

"Oh- hey, no," he says urgently, brushing them away with his thumb. "Why are you-?"

"I don't know," she snaps, pursing her lips at him. "Do we have to put labels on  _everything_?"

Stiles blinks, startled.

"Sure we do," he says. He points to his dad. "Sheriff." He points to Lydia. "Banshee." He points to himself. "Basket case."

His dad chuckles, groaning slightly as he pushes off of the couch and grabs Stiles and Lydia's trash from the floor.

"You two can put in another one if you want. I'll go clean up."

For a moment, they're silent, letting him leave the room. Then Lydia dries the last of her tears and sniffles up towards Stiles with her bottom lip jutting out further than usual. Unable to help himself, Stiles kisses her.

"What's wrong?" she asks as he pulls back. He's confused for a moment before he remembers the fact that she can feel his emotions.

"Label it," he tells her. "You tell me."

Lydia thinks for a moment.

"Dread."

"Sounds about right, yeah."

"What are you dreading?"

"I think I just realized that me leaving means that my dad is going to be alone," he admits. "I wasn't really thinking about it before, but… shit. When we go off to school, my dad's by himself."

"He's going to be okay, Stiles."

"I guess," he says, picking at a loose thread on his shirt. "I hope."

"Stiles."

"He doesn't have anyone else, Lyds."

She can't argue because it's true.

"Even though you're not going to be here… maybe you're still going to be enough, Stiles." He doesn't respond, so she keeps going. "He was talking about you before you got here and, Stiles, you can think what you think, but there is nobody who loves you more than your father. He's so proud of you. All this time, I think you've been enough. And I don't think that's going to end just because you go off to school."

Lydia kisses him one more time before she gets off of the floor to go see if his dad needs any help.

* * *

 

The sun is shining into Lydia's childhood bedroom as she stares at her wall and doesn't look at anything at all.

"What happened?" Stiles asks, because something must have happened, but Lydia shakes her head.

She gets like this sometimes. They will arrive back at her house from school and she won't be able to say anything the entire car ride home. Sometimes, he can poke and prod and kiss her into a good mood, but today she walks slowly up the stairs, dragging her feet up the hardwood staircase.

Stiles has always thought it made sense, how perfect looking Lydia's house was. It had always seemed to go along with everything else about her- it played into the fantasy. But now he has seen her messy bed-head peaking out from under the covers as he went downstairs to grab the stash of oreos she keeps hidden in the pantry, and he has watched her cry when she doesn't know why she's crying. He has felt all of the emotions that are totally normal, and all the ones that are supposed to be kept only to oneself. When Lydia has them, they are Stiles' too.

At this point, he doesn't think she's perfect anymore. And on days like these, seeing her walk up the perfect staircase with eyes that haven't been able to see all day makes him want to pick her up and carry her to her bedroom, just to save her from becoming more beaten and battered than she already is.

It's been happening more and more frequently, and sometimes Stiles feels like he is grabbing at wisps of Lydia instead of all of her. It makes him feel useless. She is the most  _together_  person he's ever met, and even when she loses pieces of herself, she has always seemed so whole to him.

Days like today make Stiles feel like Lydia is slowly crumbling and he doesn't notice because he is too busy loving her to let himself see it.

"I dreamed about Allison last night," Lydia says, voice higher than usual. Her eyebrows are raised as though she is surprised, but Stiles doesn't know why. "I used to dream about her all the time. When she died, at first."

His shoulder is pressing into hers as he sits next to her at the foot of her bed, feet planted on the floor.

"What happened in the dream?" asks Stiles, even though a part of him doesn't want to know.

"It doesn't matter." Lydia shrugs. "I mean, it does, but… but I'm used to that part."

"So what matters?" asks Stiles, staring at her with too much intent in his eyes.

"You don't want to hear it."

"I promise you, I do."

"I don't belong here anymore, Stiles."

It still stabs like a knife even when he had been prepared to hear it.

"Yeah," he agrees, staring down at the floor.

"I hate being in Beacon Hills. I hate feeling all of them everywhere. I hate that I have this tiny recollection of what it was like to be dead, to be nothing, and then suddenly it was gone and I had enough consciousness to fear it. And I don't think I'm going to be able to escape it while I have to walk into Beacon Hills High School every day and see Allison's locker, and the classroom where Aiden and I used to make out, and the table that Boyd used to sit at while he read."

"Okay," Stiles says. "So say it."

Lydia nods, blinking back tears.

"I'm not happy," she says. "But I want to be. For you."

He wants to tell her that he'll try harder. But he doesn't know what to do. Instead, he wraps her puffy white comforter around the both of them and is obsessed with watching her lips as she pants into his mouth, sharing breaths between them. He rocks into her, his chest pressed hard against hers as Lydia squeezes her eyes shut and clings to him. Stiles kisses her neck, huffing hot breaths onto her skin and keeping the comforter wrapped around the two of them.

It's enough to hide them from everything else, if only temporarily.

* * *

"Are you on your way home?"

Her voice is so weirdly chirpy that Stiles almost pulls his phone to check the caller ID and make sure that the person he's talking to is actually Lydia Martin.

"Uh… yes?"

"Good," she says, sounding satisfied.

"Where were you today?" Stiles asks, pressing his foot a bit harder on the gas and, as a result, having to stop too abruptly when a car takes a left turn in front of him. He takes a brief moment to flip the guy off before he continues to drive, placing the phone precariously on his knee and putting it on speaker. "I waited for you at my car."

"I left after AP bio," Lydia tells him, voice crackling oddly over the speaker on Stiles' phone. She sounds very far away. "I had to… do stuff."

"What kind of stuff?" Stiles asks, turning onto his street. He sees Lydia's car parked in his driveway. "Does it have to do with why you're at my house right now?"

"Mmmm. Maybe. What do you think?"

"I think you're probably naked right now. What do you think?"

"I think you're  _wrong_ , but thanks for playing."

"No problem," Stiles says, turning into his driveway and parking. "I'll be there in a second."

He drops his backpack at the front door, locking it behind himself for good measure. He can hear music floating from his bedroom, something slow and acoustic, and it makes him smile. There's a funny, nervous feeling tugging at his stomach as he turns the knob and opens the door to see Lydia standing in the middle of his bedroom. Her hands are twisting together as she anxiously looks at him, and her hair is curled and over her shoulder, and she is wearing a prom dress. A navy blue prom dress that goes all the way to the floor of his bedroom.

"Lydia?" he breathes, looking up at her. She's got candles lit on his dresser and his bedside table, and she does a twirl for him, slow and steady. She watches his face the entire time, unable to look away for some reason. "What are you doing?"

"Well," she says. "Prom is this weekend. And I wanted to give you a chance to prepare yourself. You know. So you don't… ravish me on the dance floor and mess up my hair completely."

"Lydia," Stiles says patiently. "We are going to dance so much that your hair will mess itself up. But  _I_ will have nothing to do with it."

She's smiling when he kisses her, the expression somehow not meeting her eyes, which are still locked on Stiles' nervously.

"Do you like it?"

He slides his hands lower, feeling the keyhole in the back of the dress where the small of her back is open to him, and he nods, letting his hands rest on her hips. Lydia wraps her arms around his neck and presses her forehead into his neck, swaying to the music.

"What's going on, Lydia?"

She looks up at him, her eyes too innocent.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you didn't come over here just so I could be prepared to see you at prom. You're here for a reason."

"See, I don't know how you could possibly think that to be true."

"Oh, you don't?" he says sarcastically.

"No," Lydia replies, shaking her head in one sweeping motion. "You've wanted to go to prom with me since you were in middle school. Do you honestly think you would have been able to stand at the top of promenade with everybody watching us and not make some horribly lewd comment about what you want to do in the back of the jeep after the prom?"

"Wow, thanks for believing in me," he says. "But, yeah, we're probably going to have sex in the bathroom  _at_ the prom."

"Stiles."

"It's on my bucket list!" he whines. "Give me this one thing."

He knows that she knows that he's teasing, so he kisses her instead of letting her answer, just because she's there and he can.

"Haven't I given you enough?" she asks, unlocking her hands so that she can gesture to her dress. "I mean, I think this is a pretty nice graduation gift."

"Lydia," Stiles says, frowning down at her. "Do you honestly think that you being in love me isn't enough? Like, seriously. You fell in love with me. I have no fucking idea how that happened, but that's enough for… I don't know… several million graduation gifts."

She looks pained for the first time, glancing down towards their feet. The music has stopped playing, but Stiles and Lydia's hips are still locked together, swaying to that same beat.

"I do love you," she says quietly. "Don't… don't lose that, okay? Don't forget about that part."

"What are you-"

"That's not going to change," Lydia tells him, enunciating clearly. "Even if I had died and this never happened, I would have died being in love with you. It's not… it's not something that's going to go away, or be taken away. I love you."

"I love you too," he says, but he's confused, and he can feel it clouding everything else that she's saying.

"So show me," Lydia replies, stepping back and reaching behind her dress for the zipper. She unzips it and lets it fall to the floor, leaving her in heels and the lingerie that she was wearing under the dress. "Come on, Stiles. Make me feel something. Make me feel alive."

The callback to that night in the rain makes Stiles almost lose feeling in his limbs. All he can perceive, out of the white of Lydia's skin and the flutter of lace that is her bra and the flash of strawberry blond that is her hair, is the sense of purpose that comes with loving Lydia Martin; with saving her. She steps out of the prom dress and walks towards him to pull his shirt over his head, pressing kisses against the hollow of his throat, against his sternum, against his shoulders.

Eventually they fall into the bed and he fucks her slowly, carefully, like she's offering him time along with her body. They fuck until they're exhausted, and then Lydia cards her fingers through his hair and whispers to him as he falls asleep.

When he wakes up and she's not there, Stiles doesn't know why he's surprised.

* * *

 

"Lydia, come on. Call me back. Just tell me where you are. I know you're not okay because I'm not okay and I can fucking  _feel_ how guilty you are. So can you please just call me back?"

He tosses his phone into the passenger seat, forgetting, momentarily, that Scott is sitting there. Stiles winces in apology.

"It's fine," Scott says, voice even. "But, Stiles, are you  _sure-_ "

"I'm telling you, Scott, she's anxious about something. Like, crazy anxious."

"Are you sure it's not your own anxiety?"

Stiles doesn't have time for this. There's something wrong. There's something wrong with Lydia.

"I think I can tell the difference by now, Scott."

"Okay, okay. I trust you. I'm just… checking."

Stiles presses harder against the gas, glad that his dad is out on some call in a few towns over. There had been a fire, and the Beacon Hills police precinct had rushed to the aid of the other town, leaving it nearly empty.

This happens a lot, but if it hadn't happened on its own, Stiles probably would have set the fire himself just to get everybody out of the offices.

"You've tried everything?" Scott asks again. "Everything?"

"I called her mom," says Stiles, "and she hasn't seen Lydia since before school yesterday. The last time I saw her was after school yesterday. And if everything were okay, Lydia wouldn't just completely vanish the day before prom. She had hair and nails appointments with Kira, and- and, Scott, I can feel what she feels. It's not good."

"Do you think she was kidnapped?"

For the first time, he sets his jaw into a grim line.

"No," Stiles says. "I don't."

"Wait, really?"

His hands tighten into fists around the steering wheel, knuckles turning white. This is the part he doesn't want to say. The thing he doesn't want to admit.

"I think she left on her own."

Scott is silent for a moment.

"Did her mom say-?"

"She took her car. I told Mrs. Martin to block her emergency credit card. She probably can't get very far with the money she has on her, and we can track debit purchases."

"Okay," Scott responds. "Okay."

"I've been texting her and she hasn't replied," continues Stiles stiffly. "And the other afternoon, I got home from school and she was in my room wearing her prom dress, and I think… I think she might have been saying goodbye, Scott."

Neither of them say anything else until they get to the police precinct. They jump out of the car and march inside like they always do, running just a little bit too fast to seem casual. It's effortless at this point to make quick excuses to whoever is sitting at the front desk and have them let Stiles past. He jogs up to his dad's door and inserts the key that he'd had made, not caring that it's too obvious when he pushes inside and rams himself down at the seat in front of his dad's laptop.

The sheriff continuously changes his password for this very reason, but Stiles only takes a few tries to guess what it is.

"What are you going to do?" Scott asks from over by the door, where he is closing it and re-locking it. Stiles' fingers tap furiously at the computer, almost on their own accord, as he searches through his dad's history for the database he's trying to find.

"You know how people drive through tolls and there aren't actually tollbooths anymore?" Stiles says, squinting in annoyance at the machine before double clicking.

"Yeah," replies Scott, pulling up a chair at the desk beside Stiles.

"I'm going to track Lydia's plates using the cameras that they use for those. If I can find out which way she went and what the last toll she went through was, I can call the motels in between the last two tolls where she was seen and get the security footage of their parking lots sent to my dad."

"Your dad?"

"Well, to me. Anyways. She has to sleep eventually. And if the motels don't work, I'll check gas stations."

"That sounds very-"

"Illegal, yeah," confirms Stiles. "Whatever."

It isn't until four hours later, when the sun has already set in the sky and Stiles is slumped over his computer, that Scott voices what neither of them wants to say. His eyes are just as lost as Stiles feels as he puts his hand on Stiles' shoulder, stopping him from typing.

"What if you can't find her?"

They've been looking at motel parking lots for hours. Stiles doesn't think she's stopped yet- maybe it's too early- but he can feel his body getting more and more exhausted, and he's starting to think that some of the tiredness could be Lydia's, too.

"I'm going to find her," he says stubbornly, doubling back to check on a parking lot that he's already looked at. "Shit," he mumbles when he sees that she isn't there. "Maybe she would go somewhere nicer? Like, a hotel?"

"Not if she's trying to conserve money," Scott reasons. "And she's just spending what she has on her, right? Just the cash?"

"Right," agrees Stiles with renewed vigor, and he starts checking footage again.

One hour later, he feels relief that isn't his own, because his entire body is still locked tight with stress. He wants to scream. Instead, he closes his eyes and lets himself distinguish between his own feelings and Lydia's.

"What?" asks Scott.

"She stopped," Stiles surmises. "Probably."

He starts combing through the footage again, laboriously. When he finds the plates he's been looking for, he lets out a sigh of relief, slumping against the keyboard.

"She's right there," he says, pointing. And he allows him roughly two seconds of satisfaction before he gets out of his seat. "Okay. I need coffee and then I'll get on the road."

"Coff- dude. You can't."

Scott follows Stiles out of the office, trailing behind him as they head out into the cold night air and over to the jeep, parked in a spot that is covered by leaves. It's almost impossible to spot in the darkness of the night.

"I know I get crazy when I have coffee, but I need to stay awake, Scott. I have to get to her."

"Stiles. It's not about the caffeine."

"Look, I have to start driving. Okay?"

Scott grips his arm a bit too tight, startling Stiles.

"What if she doesn't want you to follow her?"

It would be moot to tell Scott that this thought has been constantly occurring to Stiles over and over again since Lydia had stopped answering his texts. He has been shaking them away with dedication, ignoring the thought as it swirled around and around and around in his head.

Because Lydia Martin loving him was too good in the first place. Why would he expect her to want him to follow her?

"I don't know," Stiles says, hand on the handle to his jeep. "I don't really care." He climbs into the car and starts it. Scott backs up, letting him pull out of the spot. "I'll text you when I get there, okay?"

He leaves Scott standing in the parking lot, getting darker and smaller the further away Stiles drives.

* * *

 

One hour in.

Stiles almost stops driving as he remembers sixteen-year-old Lydia sweeping past him without a second thought. He remembers her holding onto Jackson like he was the only thing that existed in the world. He remembers feeling like someone had stabbed him over and over and over again every time he saw Lydia Martin.

Hurt. He remembers what hurt.

He keeps driving.

* * *

 

Two hours, and the shitty coffee that Stiles had stopped to grab at a gas station is now cold. It tastes even shitter than it had in the first place, because it was pretty damn shitty. Granted, it had been cheap as hell, and the gas hadn't been that much either. The teenager at the counter who took Stiles' money had three tattoos of naked women, and Stiles wanted to turn to Scott and laugh about it, but Scott wasn't there.

* * *

 

Three hours and he misses Allison Argent.

Still.

Always.

* * *

 

Four hours.

Four hours of driving and Lydia Martin is still somewhere by herself in the distance, trying to shield herself from… what? From what exactly? It's not Stiles; he knows that for sure. She had made sure he knew that she loves him before she'd left. She had said it once, twice, then said it again. She had cried on his living room floor. She had wrapped the two of them in her comforter and made love to him and pushed herself against him like nothing was ever going to pull apart their sweaty, imperfect something.

He's so tired.

* * *

 

The motel has a flickering sign that reads 'Horizon Inn' in bright yellow letters. Maybe they were nice once, but the neon is fading and the letters are a crusty, mustard yellow that one might find on a condiment bottle.

Lydia hates yellow. Stiles wonders if that's why she had picked this place.

The parking lot is reasonably vacant, so Stiles slides into a spot near Lydia's car and pulls his phone from the car charger with shaking hands. He thinks that he's sweating, although he's too tired to be sure, and his fingers dial her number on complete auto-pilot. He's so cold he can't really feel the screen as he pounds her number into it, and he thinks about what he had said to her on the playground that night: " _I would know you numb."_

"You found me, didn't you."

She answers on the third ring.

"I did," he says. "Are you going to tell me which room you're in?"

"No," Lydia says. "You need to go home, Stiles."

"Yeah," he agrees. "That's why I'm fucking  _here_ , Lydia."

She breathes out harshly, and he gets out of the car, slamming the door shut.

"This isn't home. It smells too bad to be home."

"Ever consider a career in comedy?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

He walks up and down the bottom floor of the motel, listening for the sound of someone talking. There's the buzz of voices in multiple voices, but none of them sound like Lydia's. Stiles stomps up the metal staircase, letting them loudly vibrate as he pushes off of them decisively.

"You should really throw it on the table."

"I would, but comedy's such a boy's club."

"Well, I believe in you."

Her voice goes soft.

"I know. You always have."

"So why aren't you going to let me in?"

"Because," she says, frustration evident in her voice. "Because I love you."

"Are you kidding?" Stiles replies, voice ferocious. "You think  _this_ is love?"

"This is me knowing that you would be happier with Scott and your dad than with me."

"That is straight-up bullshit."

"You need to go back to Beacon Hills and go to prom and go to graduation and follow through on the plan."

He loses his shit right there, yelling it, not caring who hears.

"Lydia, I don't care about the fucking plan!"

"Stiles, this is me letting you go."

"This is you giving  _up_."

"Giving up?" Lydia asks, voice taking an edge of hysteria. "Are you joking?"

"I didn't give up when you fucking died, but  _of course_ you're just going to assume that I would choose everybody else in my life over you."

"You should!"

"I'm not going to."

"I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself, Stiles."

He's running along rows and rows of doors now, his breath billowing out in a fog in front of him. He climbs the next flight of stairs and finds himself on the top floor.

"Okay."

"I'm not going back to Beacon Hills."

Stiles stops in front of the door.

"Fine."

"I don't know if I'm going to go to Stanford."

"I don't  _care_."

"Stiles, are you hearing anything I'm saying?"

"Loud and clear. You're uncertain for the first time in your life. But you're not uncertain about me." He knocks. One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Three heartbeats. "Now are you going to let me in or what?"

The door swings open, and Lydia is standing there with her phone pressed to her ear, wrapped inside of Stiles' maroon hoodie, which is almost long enough to cover her blue sleep shorts. Her phone slips out of her hand, falling to the floor.

"Thank god," she manages to get out before she tugs him by the shirt into her room and stands on her toes to kiss him. He kicks the door shut with his foot and follows Lydia to the bed, which she falls against, kissing him all over his face- his cheeks, his eyelids, his ears. Her eyelashes flutter across his cold skin and her lips are warming him and he grips her hair roughly and kisses her, unwilling to let go even when he is losing his breath.

He rolls them over so that he isn't crushing her and starts the process all over again.

"Don't be uncertain about me," he pleads with her, pulling away to stare at her face. She licks her lips and shakes her head.

"I'm not. I never was."

He wants closer, and warmer, and more, but he wants to be clear first.

"Lyds, I don't care where we go and what we do, but you can't leave me again. You can't."

"I won't," she promises softly. "I choose you, remember?"

He kisses her more slowly this time, and she chases him even after he starts to pull away, unwilling to let go. He doesn't mind. He doesn't want her to let him go. Not ever.

"You make me feel, so… so…"

He can't get out the words because Lydia is kissing along his jaw and licking at his cold earlobe.

"What?" she challenges, a smile in her voice.

"I don't know," he replies, helpless. "Alive, I think."

For now, alive is more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I understand you might be mad at me, so before you throw torches-- think about Stydia tickle fights. Mhm. Yeah.
> 
> The title is from Coming Down by Halsey, and this entire thing was written with her playing in the background, which actually explains a lot.
> 
> I really, really hope you review and tell me what you think because I wrote this in two days with little sleep and have no concept, at all, of what just happened. 
> 
> (If you got all the way through this, I thank you and appreciate it.)


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